I wanted to eat really good food, the kind of good flavors that I was used to, and so I taught myself to cook and to get those meaty, smoky, delicious, soulful flavors into my cooking.

The intake of legumes is probably the most important dietary predictor of survival in older persons around the world. We should include nuts in our diet just as we should include beans. They’re loaded with fiber, they’re loaded with antioxidants, they’re loaded with phytonutrients, packed with protein. It’s not all all or nothing, it’s not black or white. Any movement we can make along this spectrum towards eating healthier can accrue significant benefits.

Protein is a fundamental building block of life. We need it to develop and maintain our bones, muscles, and skin, to move oxygen to our lungs and fend off disease. Yet a growing body of evidence has shown that not all forms of protein are necessarily good for our health. Research has shown a surprising link between the amount of animal protein most Americans currently consume and the rise of many chronic diseases.

Two long term Harvard University studies found that eating more red meat, in particular, was linked to greater risks of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer. One of the most landmarked studies done published in Cell Metabolism followed thousands of men and women for 18 years and found that those who ate the most protein had 75% increased risk of dying prematurely. Fourfold increase in dying specifically from cancer, but not all protein, specifically animal protein. What we think is going on is that the consumption of animal protein, meat, egg white, and dairy protein, increases levels of something called IGF-1 in our body, which is a cancer-promoting growth hormone involved in the acquisition and progression of malignant human tumors. So that may explain why some of the largest studies on diet and health in history found that the incidence of all cancers combined was significantly lower eating more plant-based diets.

Despite the proven advantages of plant-based diets, eliminating commonly-consumed forms of proteins, such as cheese, meat, and milk, can be a challenge. Fortunately, one of the most potent sources of protein sprouts from beneath the ground. For thousands of years, cultures around the world have relied on legumes, a class of vegetables that includes beans, lentils, and peas, as a major source for protein and other vital nutrients. Legumes, beans, count as both the protein group and the vegetable group, so they’re packed with protein, iron, zinc, things that you’d expect from other protein-rich foods like meat, but also are packed with things you typically only find in the vegetable kingdom like fiber, folate, and potassium, so you get the best of both worlds when you eat beans while enjoying something that is naturally low in saturated fat and sodium and no cholesterol.

One recent study found that eating just a cup of beans, chickpeas, or lentils each day for three months could slow a person’s resting heart rate as much as spending 250 hours on a treadmill, a major factor in reducing the risk of dying prematurely. The intake of legumes, which are beans and split peas and chickpeas and lentils, is probably the most important dietary predictor of survival in older persons around the world. Eight percent decrease in premature death risk for each daily ounce intake.

If you look at the so-called blue zone areas, the areas around the world with the greatest longevity, the most people that live over a hundred, the one thing that all those areas share is legumes, actually, they eat bean-rich diets, and so we’re talking about the Okinawan Japanese, who are getting soy beans in the diet, or blue zone in Loma Linda, California, they’re all eating beans as an important component of their diet. People see beans as boring and nobody wants to talk about encouraging people to eat beans, but they’re so healthy, and they’re so versatile, so inexpensive. The top beans that I recommend are black beans. The darker, the more nutrients they pack. So you wanna have black beans on a regular basis, and you can have that as a black bean burger, you can have that in a burrito, in a wrap. Make a large batch, four to six cups of beans on a Sunday, just put ’em on your counter, plug it in, cook it, and then eat off of that for the rest of the week. You can make two to three different types of beans on a Sunday.

Beans provide a feeling of satisfaction and fullness that rivals many animal-based foods. This has been explained as the lentil effect, or the second meal effect. The high fiber content of legumes prevents them from being digested as quickly as meat, keeping you satisfied longer, and their low sugar content prevents insulin from spiking in your bloodstream and making you hungry. Legumes in general, like beans or lentils, are one of the lowest glycemic index foods out there. So for example, if you eat beans for supper, the blood sugar spike you get for breakfast the next morning even if you don’t eat any beans in the morning, is lower than if you hadn’t been eating beans the night before. It turns out that there are prebiotics in beans. There are compounds in beans like fiber and resistant starch that our good gut bacteria eat, and so we eat a bean burrito at night, by the next morning, our gut bacteria are eating that same bean burrito and producing these compounds, these so-called short-chain fatty acid compounds that then are absorbed back into the system and have these wonderful beneficial effects.

Chef Rich Landau is part of a revolution to move beans and other plant-based foods to the center of our plate through more creative cooking. His goal at his award-winning vegan restaurant, Veg, is to create alternatives to the mouth-watering animal-based dishes he loved as a child. We really think a lot about what goes on the plate here. I find that most vegan dishes, when you go to mainstream restaurants, they’re very lean, they’re very high note. There’s lots of flowers and colorful oils, and little bits of herbs and little leaves, and that’s great, if you wanna just taste like the garden, but the two things we think of the most when we’re cooking, is is this filling, and is this really really satisfying? The second they start saying, I’m doing something good for my body and the environment, we’ve lost it, because then they’re kind of justifying to themselves why they should be eating this. They’re eating this food because it’s delicious, because it has these layers of flavor that you’re only used to getting from a meat-based meal. You’re getting it from all vegetables because we cook them that way.

The heart of their approach is to search for plant-based alternatives that are both delicious and satisfying. Beans are one of the most versatile sources of protein and fiber on the planet. Today, they’re featured in a wide range of succulent dishes from around the world that are helping to redefine healthy eating. I wanted to eat really good food, the kind of good flavors that I was used to, so I taught myself to cook and to get those meaty, smokey, delicious, soulful flavors into my cooking. As I got older, I really started getting into this, and I decided well, maybe there’s a market for this out there, maybe, you know, if you go to a health food store, it’s kind of healthy and hippie, and there’s kind of this preconceived notion that all vegetarian food is health food, and it’s bland, and it’s this hippie rabbit food diet. I thought that was a shame that anyone ever thought that way. Food is food, and delicious food is delicious food, no matter what’s in it. Beans are one of my favorite foods. This is one of these cross-cultural phenomenons that beans exist in every culture in so many beautiful ways, and there’s so much you can do with them.

One of my favorite dishes in the world is actually made from yellow lentils, which in Indian cooking is called dal, and it’s called a mulligatawny soup. This is all about the the texture of the lentils and the layering of the spices. You start with garlic, onion, and ginger, just the way any global dish starts. A little bit of neutral oil, we use sunflower oil, and you start cooking your onions and your garlic and your ginger in the oil, and you end up with this kind of paste at the bottom that’s full of all the flavor that’s gonna build the foundation of your dish. Then, you add your vegetable stock. Now, your stock is full of all these aromatics, the curry spices, the ginger, the garlic, all combining together. Now, you’ve built your foundation with the curry, now it’s time to cook the lentils, just until they break down, until they become really creamy, and without adding that much extra fat at all, you have this really rich-tasting soup because the lentils have unlocked all their starch and broken down into the soup. And it’s a great study in textures and flavors to make this soup because you’ve used such little fat and only one layer of seasoning and ended up with something so incredibly aromatic and something so rich, that you would never believe that there wasn’t 15 hours of labor into it. It’s so simple.

Nuts are another rich and satisfying source of healthy, plant-based protein. They’ve been a staple in the human diet for hundreds of thousands of years, but only recently have scientists started to quantify their many surprising health benefits. The famous Predimed study found that adding just a small palmful of nuts to one’s daily diet for a few years can cut one’s stroke risk in half. A simple ounce of nuts, a palm full of nuts a day, is not just associated with better health but have been proven to improve health outcomes.

Nuts are relatively high in calories and fat compared to most plant-based foods. But recent studies have shown that routinely consuming them could actually reduce your risk of gaining weight or becoming obese. They found out that nut eaters actually tend to be slimmer, smaller waist, lower body mass index, than people who don’t eat nuts, and so they started doing interventional trials where they actually add nuts to their diet. You just give people, say here, eat these, handful of nuts, add them to whatever else you’re eating, and never once did we get the expected weight gain from all those extra calories.

Nuts are a potent source of vital nutrients in a plant-based diet. Specific nuts appear to protect against DNA damage, suppress inflammation and cancer, and reduce the risk of heart disease. Just a few servings a week may even help us extend our lifespan. We should include nuts in our diet just as we should include beans. They’re loaded with fiber, they’re loaded with antioxidants, they’re loaded with phytonutrients, packed with protein. Some you may find harder to digest than others, so find what you like, what works best for you, and you can soak them. The harder nuts, almonds, you can soak them overnight to make them softer, you can add them to your smoothies, you can soften them by throwing them in your food, in your stir fries. Anything that you would add an animal-based protein to, you can use nuts in the same way. When I look at a dish, I think how can I make this healthier? And you can always make anything healthier by adding greens, by adding beans, put nuts or seeds on your salad. The fat in the nuts and seeds actually helps the absorption of the carotenoid phytonutrients found in all the greens, so you actually maximize your absorption of all the nutrition in a salad if you have a whole food source of fat.

Legumes, nuts, and seeds are important components of the human diet. Providing our bodies with protein and many other vital nutrients needed to survive. They are a highly flexible and satisfying alternative to animal products, which have been linked to a wide range of serious health risks and are a critical step in the right direction for anyone considering a healthier, plant-based lifestyle. You don’t have to go completely, 100% plant-based right away, most people can’t do that, but start where you are and try to do what you can at least once a week, move that up to two or three times a week, and then try to do it at least once a day, and go from there. I encourage people to think of this healthy eating transition as kind of a free sample, just give a try for a few weeks, and then see how you feel. With the hope that by the end, after three weeks, you’ll feel so much better, then you have the internal motivation. It’s not someone saying eat your greens, it’s wow, I feel so much better, you couldn’t pay me to go back and eat the way I did before. But, it’s not all or nothing, it’s not black or white. Any movement we can make along this spectrum towards eating healthier can accrue significant benefits.

I wanted to eat really good food, the kind of good flavors that I was used to, and so I taught myself to cook and to get those meaty, smoky, delicious, soulful flavors into my cooking.

The intake of legumes is probably the most important dietary predictor of survival in older persons around the world. We should include nuts in our diet just as we should include beans. They’re loaded with fiber, they’re loaded with antioxidants, they’re loaded with phytonutrients, packed with protein. It’s not all all or nothing, it’s not black or white. Any movement we can make along this spectrum towards eating healthier can accrue significant benefits.

Protein is a fundamental building block of life. We need it to develop and maintain our bones, muscles, and skin, to move oxygen to our lungs and fend off disease. Yet a growing body of evidence has shown that not all forms of protein are necessarily good for our health. Research has shown a surprising link between the amount of animal protein most Americans currently consume and the rise of many chronic diseases.

Two long term Harvard University studies found that eating more red meat, in particular, was linked to greater risks of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer. One of the most landmarked studies done published in Cell Metabolism followed thousands of men and women for 18 years and found that those who ate the most protein had 75% increased risk of dying prematurely. Fourfold increase in dying specifically from cancer, but not all protein, specifically animal protein. What we think is going on is that the consumption of animal protein, meat, egg white, and dairy protein, increases levels of something called IGF-1 in our body, which is a cancer-promoting growth hormone involved in the acquisition and progression of malignant human tumors. So that may explain why some of the largest studies on diet and health in history found that the incidence of all cancers combined was significantly lower eating more plant-based diets.

Despite the proven advantages of plant-based diets, eliminating commonly-consumed forms of proteins, such as cheese, meat, and milk, can be a challenge. Fortunately, one of the most potent sources of protein sprouts from beneath the ground. For thousands of years, cultures around the world have relied on legumes, a class of vegetables that includes beans, lentils, and peas, as a major source for protein and other vital nutrients. Legumes, beans, count as both the protein group and the vegetable group, so they’re packed with protein, iron, zinc, things that you’d expect from other protein-rich foods like meat, but also are packed with things you typically only find in the vegetable kingdom like fiber, folate, and potassium, so you get the best of both worlds when you eat beans while enjoying something that is naturally low in saturated fat and sodium and no cholesterol.

One recent study found that eating just a cup of beans, chickpeas, or lentils each day for three months could slow a person’s resting heart rate as much as spending 250 hours on a treadmill, a major factor in reducing the risk of dying prematurely. The intake of legumes, which are beans and split peas and chickpeas and lentils, is probably the most important dietary predictor of survival in older persons around the world. Eight percent decrease in premature death risk for each daily ounce intake.

If you look at the so-called blue zone areas, the areas around the world with the greatest longevity, the most people that live over a hundred, the one thing that all those areas share is legumes, actually, they eat bean-rich diets, and so we’re talking about the Okinawan Japanese, who are getting soy beans in the diet, or blue zone in Loma Linda, California, they’re all eating beans as an important component of their diet. People see beans as boring and nobody wants to talk about encouraging people to eat beans, but they’re so healthy, and they’re so versatile, so inexpensive. The top beans that I recommend are black beans. The darker, the more nutrients they pack. So you wanna have black beans on a regular basis, and you can have that as a black bean burger, you can have that in a burrito, in a wrap. Make a large batch, four to six cups of beans on a Sunday, just put ’em on your counter, plug it in, cook it, and then eat off of that for the rest of the week. You can make two to three different types of beans on a Sunday.

Beans provide a feeling of satisfaction and fullness that rivals many animal-based foods. This has been explained as the lentil effect, or the second meal effect. The high fiber content of legumes prevents them from being digested as quickly as meat, keeping you satisfied longer, and their low sugar content prevents insulin from spiking in your bloodstream and making you hungry. Legumes in general, like beans or lentils, are one of the lowest glycemic index foods out there. So for example, if you eat beans for supper, the blood sugar spike you get for breakfast the next morning even if you don’t eat any beans in the morning, is lower than if you hadn’t been eating beans the night before. It turns out that there are prebiotics in beans. There are compounds in beans like fiber and resistant starch that our good gut bacteria eat, and so we eat a bean burrito at night, by the next morning, our gut bacteria are eating that same bean burrito and producing these compounds, these so-called short-chain fatty acid compounds that then are absorbed back into the system and have these wonderful beneficial effects.

Chef Rich Landau is part of a revolution to move beans and other plant-based foods to the center of our plate through more creative cooking. His goal at his award-winning vegan restaurant, Veg, is to create alternatives to the mouth-watering animal-based dishes he loved as a child. We really think a lot about what goes on the plate here. I find that most vegan dishes, when you go to mainstream restaurants, they’re very lean, they’re very high note. There’s lots of flowers and colorful oils, and little bits of herbs and little leaves, and that’s great, if you wanna just taste like the garden, but the two things we think of the most when we’re cooking, is is this filling, and is this really really satisfying? The second they start saying, I’m doing something good for my body and the environment, we’ve lost it, because then they’re kind of justifying to themselves why they should be eating this. They’re eating this food because it’s delicious, because it has these layers of flavor that you’re only used to getting from a meat-based meal. You’re getting it from all vegetables because we cook them that way.

The heart of their approach is to search for plant-based alternatives that are both delicious and satisfying. Beans are one of the most versatile sources of protein and fiber on the planet. Today, they’re featured in a wide range of succulent dishes from around the world that are helping to redefine healthy eating. I wanted to eat really good food, the kind of good flavors that I was used to, so I taught myself to cook and to get those meaty, smokey, delicious, soulful flavors into my cooking. As I got older, I really started getting into this, and I decided well, maybe there’s a market for this out there, maybe, you know, if you go to a health food store, it’s kind of healthy and hippie, and there’s kind of this preconceived notion that all vegetarian food is health food, and it’s bland, and it’s this hippie rabbit food diet. I thought that was a shame that anyone ever thought that way. Food is food, and delicious food is delicious food, no matter what’s in it. Beans are one of my favorite foods. This is one of these cross-cultural phenomenons that beans exist in every culture in so many beautiful ways, and there’s so much you can do with them.

One of my favorite dishes in the world is actually made from yellow lentils, which in Indian cooking is called dal, and it’s called a mulligatawny soup. This is all about the the texture of the lentils and the layering of the spices. You start with garlic, onion, and ginger, just the way any global dish starts. A little bit of neutral oil, we use sunflower oil, and you start cooking your onions and your garlic and your ginger in the oil, and you end up with this kind of paste at the bottom that’s full of all the flavor that’s gonna build the foundation of your dish. Then, you add your vegetable stock. Now, your stock is full of all these aromatics, the curry spices, the ginger, the garlic, all combining together. Now, you’ve built your foundation with the curry, now it’s time to cook the lentils, just until they break down, until they become really creamy, and without adding that much extra fat at all, you have this really rich-tasting soup because the lentils have unlocked all their starch and broken down into the soup. And it’s a great study in textures and flavors to make this soup because you’ve used such little fat and only one layer of seasoning and ended up with something so incredibly aromatic and something so rich, that you would never believe that there wasn’t 15 hours of labor into it. It’s so simple.

Nuts are another rich and satisfying source of healthy, plant-based protein. They’ve been a staple in the human diet for hundreds of thousands of years, but only recently have scientists started to quantify their many surprising health benefits. The famous Predimed study found that adding just a small palmful of nuts to one’s daily diet for a few years can cut one’s stroke risk in half. A simple ounce of nuts, a palm full of nuts a day, is not just associated with better health but have been proven to improve health outcomes.

Nuts are relatively high in calories and fat compared to most plant-based foods. But recent studies have shown that routinely consuming them could actually reduce your risk of gaining weight or becoming obese. They found out that nut eaters actually tend to be slimmer, smaller waist, lower body mass index, than people who don’t eat nuts, and so they started doing interventional trials where they actually add nuts to their diet. You just give people, say here, eat these, handful of nuts, add them to whatever else you’re eating, and never once did we get the expected weight gain from all those extra calories.

Nuts are a potent source of vital nutrients in a plant-based diet. Specific nuts appear to protect against DNA damage, suppress inflammation and cancer, and reduce the risk of heart disease. Just a few servings a week may even help us extend our lifespan. We should include nuts in our diet just as we should include beans. They’re loaded with fiber, they’re loaded with antioxidants, they’re loaded with phytonutrients, packed with protein. Some you may find harder to digest than others, so find what you like, what works best for you, and you can soak them. The harder nuts, almonds, you can soak them overnight to make them softer, you can add them to your smoothies, you can soften them by throwing them in your food, in your stir fries. Anything that you would add an animal-based protein to, you can use nuts in the same way. When I look at a dish, I think how can I make this healthier? And you can always make anything healthier by adding greens, by adding beans, put nuts or seeds on your salad. The fat in the nuts and seeds actually helps the absorption of the carotenoid phytonutrients found in all the greens, so you actually maximize your absorption of all the nutrition in a salad if you have a whole food source of fat.

Legumes, nuts, and seeds are important components of the human diet. Providing our bodies with protein and many other vital nutrients needed to survive. They are a highly flexible and satisfying alternative to animal products, which have been linked to a wide range of serious health risks and are a critical step in the right direction for anyone considering a healthier, plant-based lifestyle. You don’t have to go completely, 100% plant-based right away, most people can’t do that, but start where you are and try to do what you can at least once a week, move that up to two or three times a week, and then try to do it at least once a day, and go from there. I encourage people to think of this healthy eating transition as kind of a free sample, just give a try for a few weeks, and then see how you feel. With the hope that by the end, after three weeks, you’ll feel so much better, then you have the internal motivation. It’s not someone saying eat your greens, it’s wow, I feel so much better, you couldn’t pay me to go back and eat the way I did before. But, it’s not all or nothing, it’s not black or white. Any movement we can make along this spectrum towards eating healthier can accrue significant benefits.

Prescription: Nutrition Episode 3 – Spilling the Beans

Doctor's Note

I was approached by CuriosityStream, a new on-demand streaming service for documentaries and non-fiction programming, created by Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks, about doing a four-part series on healthy eating. I agreed, if they would offer at least limited time access to the series for free.

You may remember seeing the first episode on NutritionFacts.org over this past year, and they are now letting us share this one, the third. The other three episodes of Prescription: Nutrition are available to watch now on CuriosityStream for free, but you have to sign up for a 30-day trial. If you don’t want to continue the trial, make sure to cancel before the 30 days, or they’ll start charging you. To access the 30-day trial, visit CuriosityStream.com and use the special code NUTRITION. This offer must be redeemed by December 31, 2018.

How did this all come about? Elizabeth North, president and CEO of CuriosityStream, began her own journey toward plant-based eating when she was struggling with some health scares. She saw immediate benefits. “I realized astounding improvements in my health (and surprisingly, my fitness) from eating so many fresh fruits and vegetables,” she said. “Not only did I start consuming mass quantities of plant-based foods, but I also began consuming books, from The China Study to Eat To Live to Dr. Greger’s How Not To Die. The authors had differing perspectives on diet, but all experts agreed that adding more fresh fruits and vegetables is the first step to improving your nutrition and your overall health.”

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We knew because beans were always the poor people’s main source of protein. The poor couldn’t afford meat. My grandmother raised 6 kids on beans and would go to the butcher to request beef bones (stripped of meat) for her dog. She had no dog, just 6 kids. And she cooked the bones in with the beans. It was delicious! And very nutritious.
Joseph in Missoula

Hi Tom
If I am not mistaken this is a snippet from a longer video Dr. Greger made for something other than NF.org. I first saw the longer version over a year ago? Can’t remember where. Anyhow I like it. Maybe not what we are used to here. Wish I could remember where I saw the original. It’s presentation was appropriate at the time.
Gale

Yes,I think he is keen to get the message out to the wider community, That is wonderful and a genuine public service.

However, i come here for the science not the ‘pitch’ and personally I am wary of glossy marketing brochures that are trying to sell me something – be it a product, a service or an idea. Life has taught me to be cautious about statements and claims that don’t come backed by hard, checkable evidence. If it hadn’t, I’d probably be glugging down coconut oil by the bucketful now and believing that keto diets are the healthiest.

I suppose that, philosophically speaking, I am from Missouri. It has the advantage that it stops me buying too many Brooklyn Bridges.

In sum, this just comes across as the video equivalent of a glossy marketing brochure. It is perfect for YouTube but IMHO is a bit out of place here.

Interestingly, I probably am the same way, where I am skeptical of everything, and I come here for the science, too.

I respect that about you and I understand it.

The thing is, I think of this site, rather than YouTube and Facebook as the heart and soul of Dr. Greger.

Nutritionfacts.org is his baby. His vision. His life dedication. His sacrifice. His heart communication with the world.

Him trying to save the health of the world.

This is this site, which is in honor of his grandmother.

You talk about his YouTube site and , interestingly, each of his sites are all such different audiences.

And I agree that the other sites aren’t doing the same process.

His Care2 audience will LOVE this video.

I love that audience. They just say, “Thank You” one person after another after another just line up to say “Thank You, Dr. Greger”

This is his toughest audience, but it should be a safe place for him to post his information and I mean all of it.

He doesn’t tell this audience ahead of time about so many things.

I find out about his Ted Talk and his Ryan & Kelly and the movies with him in it out there someplace, and I am almost the opposite of you, except that I would like this video and links to everything he does that I can see on-line somewhere on this site.

I guess I am not just about the science. I want these men to save the lives of the world.

When I listened to the Food Revolution Summit, they talked about having an audience of 325,000 or something like that. That is not nearly big enough. There are 30 million people in America with eating disorders alone. There will be close to 2 million people diagnosed with cancer this year and over 600,000 people will die from their heart disease this year. Obesity and every other disease and disability and children who lose their parents young are on my mind.

Saving all of those lives and sparing all that pain means more to me than any of the videos Dr. Greger puts up.

This whole process is not about health to me, even though I have already benefitted. This is about bearing witness to what this man stands for. That vision.

This community of WFPB being this loving compassionate community means something to me.

I am going to say that I went to John McDougall’s site for the first time this weekend and he has dynamic Quick Start videos, but his boards are sterile and I didn’t know it was going to turn out to be because he bans people, until he banned me after my first comment and it was a nice one, but I tried to be too helpful to people with diseases and that isn’t allowed.

I know Dr. Greger allows a whole lot of communication here and he will take yours into account and I will give my opinion that, if there could be another section where that kind of stuff is, then that would be great!

But Dr. Greger, this is your web-site.

And I am going to join your Care2 audience and say, “Thank you!”

My goodness, if he wanted to put ads for his own conferences, I would be so grateful to hear what is going on out there, because Dr. Greger has been my only connection to any of this.

I haven’t even seen Forks Over Knives or What The Health or H.O.P.E. and if someone on this site hadn’t mentioned the Food Revolution Summit, I wouldn’t have even known about it.

It helps me even to see who the leaders of the movement are.

I know that you are doing a “health” process and Dr. Greger is doing a “WFPB Movement” process and I love that part.

I thought this was a great informationak videi!!!!
To each there own…
The world famous vegan chef even demonstrated one of his recipes we could cook at home.
I applaud you Dr.G and team for giving us such a variety if streaming videos.

Just finished cooking the demonstrated recipe given on today’s video. It was DELICIOUS!!!
THANK YOU DR. G AND TEAM FOR THE VARIETY OF VIDEOS you present.
All scientific data and no fun naked a dul presentation.

I also enjoyed the nice mix of scienctific data mixed in with the master chefs Demos. Your work truly is a gift for those looking to get healthy.
THANK YOU

Yes TG, I agree. But also, I don’t understand promoting contradictory ideas on here.. to wit, the use of oil. This site has presented evidence against the use of oil in the diet, and here features it in a recipe. To me this makes no sense.
I cook indian curries and dahls on a daily basis, without the use of oil or ghee. They are scrumptious and health-promoting as this website and Dr Greger would have me believe. I see no need to promote the use of unhealthful products in the name of some alliance. Not good.

linda, you’re being scrupulous. A small amount of oil isn’t such a horrible thing. This site isn’t about telling people what to do, it’s about presenting to them the best and latest scientific evidence. Dr. Greger advises against oil because the whole plant is better and it can have a negative impact on arterial function. But other studies using small amounts of oil in dressing mixed with high antioxidant foods such as balsamic vinegar, actually improves arterial function.. that isn’t to say evoo improves arterial function, but it is to say that the heart healthy foods mixed with it could be enough to not only negate a negative impact on arterial function, but boost arterial function in general.
Some people will choose to stay away from oil completely, some people might choose to stay away from salt completely, any added sugars completely, and so on… others may not and that is ok, it doesn’t make them inferior or wrong.
This site is about scientific evidence and giving people the information so they can choose how to apply it to their lives, it isn’t about the condemnation of those who some might look at as eating an inferior diet and I actually see a lot of this, not restricted to this site, but in general and it’s extremely annoying.

And even small amounts of cooking oil every day do mount up. Personally, I think that Linda’s approach is the right one – certainly it appears to be a prudent one given what we know about chronic disease rates in India.

Hi TG, I probably should have specified what I was exactly commenting on since there are multiple posts here. I was only referring to this line:

“But also, I don’t understand promoting contradictory ideas on here.. to wit, the use of oil. This site has presented evidence against the use of oil in the diet, and here features it in a recipe. To me this makes no sense.”

In no way did I mean to suggest that omitting oil is “scrupulous.” I agree we should limit or omit our intake of oils. My point was only that a chef adding a small amount of oil to a recipe full of healthy whole plant foods being in the same video as Dr. Greger isn’t taking away from his message and past and future presentations of the scientific evidence or his suggestions based off of it. And also that the small amount of oil used in the recipe doesn’t make it horrible. If Dr. Greger’s message gets out there to a broader audience through additional videos like these, I think that will only help people start viewing more of his work and they’ll learn more and begin to make different decisions as they do so.
The only way I would see it as contradictory would be if this was a recipe by Dr. Greger.

Thanks for the link, interesting stuff. Based on the article, it sounds like there is a lot of high fat and low vegetable intake in India so even if they took a more subtle yet still dramatic approach by eating a diet entirely of plant foods and only limiting oils, there would likely be a dramatic increase in health. I’m not arguing for the introduction of oils, I just think when they’re treated as a “yellow light” food, they aren’t necessarily detrimental to health. I’m not basing this off of any scientific study or advising anyone anything, I’m only sharing my own personal thoughts – I would never advise anyone based on them.

Most Indian recipes, if not all, use a host of spices (bare minimum is turmeric and red chilly powder). And therefore, as flavour is critical to all food, oil will be required. For e.g. tempering dals with mustard seeds or cumin seeds is not the same as roasting / powdering and then adding them. Traditional recipes use ghee and oils but in very small units (because they were expensive/unavailable in quantities seen today); I, for e.g., can cook 750gm of, say, string beans in 1 tbsp of oil because I use seasoned cast iron or earthen cookware (again, traditional cookware); tempering of dals (cooking, say, half cup dried lentils) with 1 tsp of oil/ghee.

The rise of chronic diseases in India is linked to factors similar to those anywhere else: reduced vegetables/whole grains/fruits/beans; increased availability of processed food and heavy restaurant food (sold and bought as part of a “modern”, “aspirational” lifestyle that involves the ability to spend more); increased consumption of dairy and other animal foods; penetration of plastics/pesticides/such; and increasingly sedentary lifestyles even in rural areas. Traditional foods, even 40 years ago, were still largely protected, from the malaise brought in by large companies, promotion boards, etc.

We eat tremendous amounts of Indian food that does not use oil and we are very satisfied with it. If you use oil in your cooking, all available evidence shows that you are putting yourself at increased risk for disease and early death as vegetarian Indians eating a “traditional diet” that includes oil/ghee have significantly increased rates of disease and early death as well.

Ben, I know people from India and I’m told that there are a lot of unhealthy people living in India because they actually eat very little produce and even lentils. Poorer families tend to be less healthy because they eat a lot of animal products and refined foods and don’t eat all that healthy Indian food we assume all Indians are eating. This is simply what I’ve been told when speaking to an Indian doctor and a couple others. My point, I don’t think there is information that states that those eating whole food or mostly whole foods plant based or mostly plant based Indian dishes in India are dying because of use of cooking oil.

Dr Greger advises against oils because they impair artery function. For more information : https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/vegetable-oil/ I am not judging anyone. Re-read my post. I commented on the promotion of ideas contrary to what this site has presented the evidence against. That’s all. Do what you will.

Well we DO have a world to save, and it takes all kinds to make a world! This will be a nice introduction for some, an overview and a way in. But I love the doc’s narrow, meaty monographs. But this is quite well done.

The Food Network described portobello mushrooms as no longer being in fashion.

THAT is the problem with being popular and entertaining people.

I already know that John has his hands full getting people to stay interested in starch.

Every single food has to do this whole PR campaign.

I say it, because you need to celebrate every small victory and not take anything personally and you are too kind-hearted and sensitive to be like that and if you lose your positivity and kindness you lose one audience and when you don’t do your science you lose a different audience and if you do, then eat a white mushroom, which never got any respect or eat a Portabella mushroom and ponder the idiotic human mind that stopped seeing its value.
I have known famous people and if you let us get under your skin, then refocus on the people who need to hear the message for the first time.

I ate beans and rice and spinach and mushrooms and tomatoes for dinner and I grew up never eating beans and rice and it was delicious.

Yes, Michael, presentation format matters, and one or another format is preferred, but the two formats are not equal in conveying information. This is not a matter of only simple emotional preference, but the inherent power and efficiency of scientific research presented clearly and simply– without resort to smiling faces and industrial music.

Dr. Greger does know his audience, and people have found no problem understanding his well-crafted, standard-format presentations– the reason NutritionFacts.org has been such a thunderous (and growing) success over the years.

To his credit, Dr. Greger is willing to experiment. The current video effort represents merely Greger’s often-stated concern about new visitors and inquirers who lack context and understanding of even the core principles of a whole-food, plant-based diet. Dr. Greger almost certainly has done focus-group trials of different formats, in an effort to see what “works” with a new, inexperienced audience to make those fundamental propositions clear.

But once the visitor has the core principles, presentation format is far less important than understanding of content– the actual research. The current video format takes twice or even three times as long to demonstrate the points of even a single five-minute standard-format video. So, while introductory video has its place, the standard-format is the only conceivable format to present the main body of research.

Finally, only familiarity with sound research equips the typical vegetarian/vegan to understand and explain the WFPB diet to others. Feeling good and memorizing summary statements about a dietary approach has little to do with understanding it– witness those who dismiss the WFPB as the delusion of effete snobs, and prefer not to discuss nutrition data or research method.

Michael: With all due respect, I disagree with you. It’s not TG’s preference. It’s the agenda Dr. Greger himself has set for this site. He says he reads all the papers on nutrition published every year – and brings the essence of them to the visitors of this site – so they don’t have to. I’ve been visiting this site for the last five years or so trusting that that’s what he does. This video belongs on Youtube, not here as part of the regular MWF video series.

Maybe he can create a separate section on the site featuring this type of videos, for those who needs occasional cheer leading.

I’m sad for you because your comment is so out of place that you must carry around a lot of anger and look for places to put it. Do you stand at the edge of a small waterfall and say you prefer larger ones? If you want citations and references, then read the medical journals yourself instead of criticizing the work of others. By the way, I’m sure Dr. Greger would be happy to reimburse you for all the money you’ve spent investing this site.

Brian Anthony Kraemer: in the many years I’ve been visiting this site & reading the comments section, I don’t think I’ve ever seen TG angry about anything. I’ve always known him to stick to the facts, cite his sources & get straight to the point. Even when giving an opinion, like he did above, he’s straight to the point. Some people like his style, others don’t. But he never talks through his hat, and for that reason has always been a valuable resource and asset to this comments section.

I can understand that you might disagree with TG’s opinion on the video. However, I take umbrage at your personal attack on him.

BAK–
The fundamental mission of Dr. Greger is to present the best nutritional research clearly and understandably, and he has done so successfully for years. So, if TG wants the standard, successful format, he merely agrees with the time-honored approach Dr. Greger already has taken.

To suggest anyone must choose between one format and another stumbles on a major point. The introductory video series is addressed to an audience lacking some or all of the fundamentals of the WFPB dietary approrach– not to mention most of the science behind it. TG states why the standard approach seems better for his needs (and probably for the majority of Nutrition Facts material), and his points are well-taken.

But your own snide and strident tone gives you away– if TG wants a “bigger waterfall”, he would be remiss not to mention his preference, since we always can use bigger waterfalls. Meantime, you are free to frolic in puddles, and none is likely to chide you for it.

Although reading of full research and citations is often necessary to full understanding, the mission of Nutrition Facts– as Dr. Greger is fond of pointing out– is to review the best of all available English-language research each year, so Nutrition Facts supporters do not have to, Greger’s standard-format, clearly-stated presentations have been well-received, and the links often serve to make the presentation even clearer.

If you have contributed to Nutrition Facts in the past year, good for you. But a major part of any contribution is to create a sense of community, and avoid becoming even a friendly troll on the website you claim to support.

I am happy to see this type of “infomercial” to help reach a greater and more diverse audience. The science based citations are great too, but this was a welcome piece of variety and it focused on the positive so I ended up with a real feel good heart watching it. Often the other videos make me feel helpless and hopeless for our planet and the ignorant, self centered, animal cruelty carnivorous in it.

I agree Cheryl. I was excited to come across this video because it’s something I actually think I can get some of my family to sit down and watch and not feel overwhelmed. I for one love the direct science but a very large portion of people do not. I’ve actually talked to people about how cool the scientific process is in our bodies, and their eyes literally glazed over haha. It’s just not for everyone I guess.
Dr. Greger does this because he cares and wants to reach people. This is an excellent way at doing that. And what’s more about videos like these is that they might inspire others to start viewing his other videos.

Infomercial? I’m sure this is designed to raise an eyebrow for people to do their OWN due diligence without being overwhelming. The “evidence” is out there in mass from many experts, including those who have been published in scientific literature. Just a few more clicks away, TG. I would think an educated and/or concerned individual might at least want to dig deeper. You’ll find what you’re looking for.

Cashews might be tastier although I’m trying to move toward more walnuts. Have you tried Fuhrman’s Golden Austrian Cauliflower Cream Soup? It has ground up cashews and is FABulous! When I made it, my son said it was the best soup he’d ever had.

Shaylen, it is on p. 230 of his book, “The End of Diabetes.” It’s also on p. 265 of my paperback revised edition, January, 2011, of “Eat to Live.” Perhaps you can get it from the library if you don’t already have it?
I picked up a copy of his “Eat to Live Quick and Easy Cookbook” and am amazed at how much fat is in the recipes. Now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t have gotten it….

Dr. Greger needs to mix things up. People have different learning styles. Some people learn better by visual presentations like this one. Some people are not academically inclined like you are, and they cannot learn from statistics, charts, and graphs like you. Thankfully, Dr. Greger is using a wide variety of educational tools to educate the masses about a whole plant food diet.

Is there any evidence that beans are anti-androgenic and therefore bad for maintaining testosterone. Do they pose any other health risks suggested in Christopher Walker video https://youtu.be/NnlKHn4zh2c

I have a hard time believing beans/legumes reduce testosterone levels. In 2003 my level was only 368. At that time, I was lifting weights and eating lots of whey protein to put on muscle and was avoiding soy products and did not eat that many beans (I was a lacto-pesco-vegetarian at that time, had been for decades). In 2017, at age 71, my testosterone had risen to 789.
By then I had become a vegan, upped the soy and beans/legumes to 3-4 serving per day. I also continued to do a lot of exercise, but shifted from mostly weights to a more balanced program (weights, interval training, jogging/hiking). So it cannot be invariably true.

Hi Charles- I’ve reviewed the video and the data. It was a reasonable theory to investigate whether beans lower testosterone levels or have other “feminizing effects” such as lower sperm counts. The best way to evaluate whether this is true was through clinical studies, then a meta-analysis to systematically review the clinical studies. The meta analysis of this found that there was no effect on testosterone from eating soybeans, and no feminizing effects overall. I cannot find studies on every type of bean, but soy is commonly studied and would be most likely to have such effects given it’s high isoflavone content. Given this plus the well-documented, brand health effects of including beans in the diet, we’d encourage you to keep them a part of your Daily Dozen. Dr Anderson, Health Support Volunteer https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20378106

I’ve been a Nutrition Facts fan and supporter since the early days. To me, it’s very disappointing that you’ve teamed up with this Discovery Channel affiliate to do videos that are free for only a short period of time (or any limited amount of time). That’s not been part of the Nutrition Facts ethics and it’s a slippery slope to change it. Free, unbiased information one of the things that sets NF apart from other nutrition information resources. Discovery Channel is just another multinational corporation that cares about profit first. You need only look at the photo (link below) on this article titled: “Why the owners of the Discovery Channel and Food Network are pursuing a $15 billion merger” to visually see what I mean. This corporation isn’t interested in getting rid by programming (double meaning intended). It’s interested in niche content for profit. What are you doing with these people?

Mark G, I think Dr. Greger is trying to reach a wider audience — and let’s face it, whole foods plant based eaters are a niche market. We represent a tiny portion of the population in this country, and perhaps even world-wide, as more countries fall under the spell of Big Food and start eating a “western diet” (or SAD: Standard American Diet). His position, as expressed several times in this video, is to start where people actually are, and to encourage them to try eating more whole foods plant based. Even small steps can bring large improvements in health and well-being.

Dr j. So true. I live in small town in Texas. We can’t even get fresh Kale and many other forms of greens because although the local store tried to sell them, not enough people in a town of 5 thousand eat it. That’s means only a handful of people in this town eat kale or greens. We wonder why we are inflamed, and sick while burgers and fries chicken and Soada is on every corner.

BTW, just to be clear. I don’t object to the concept of trying to appeal to a broader audience. I’m disappointed with the collaboration with these corporations that then control it. I’d rather see NF develop it’s own original content that can then be licensed for viewing. That way, NF gets to always decide about the content and if there’s always a no cost option.

I have to agree with Mark G. I support Dr G’s efforts to reach out to a broader audience, but it would seem to be a better approach for NF to develop it’s own way of doing it, rather than team up with part of the mainstream media, who, in most instances, tell everyone it’s OK to eat eggs, butter, etc.

MarkG, but isn’t that already what Dr. Greger has been and is continuing on doing? He’s only stretching himself out farther, not abandoning what he’s already built. I think that this will only attract more people to NF.org and Dr. Greger’s books.

But if he stays in his own place, that’s never going to get the message to all those still eating and thinking and saying it’s ok to eat eggs, etc. It’s so much more effective to spread this information when he’s in the mix with the rest of the world on top of having his own non-profit website. Again, it will only help to attract more people to it. So it’s not taking away from what he’s already built, only good can come out of it imo. It’s not like he’s selling NF.org so I really don’t know why anyone would worry.

Thank you Dr J for your comment. This type of videos has its place especially for some people that want to see more practical side of using whole plant based recipes to help them with the incorporation of more plant in their diet.

I see these collaborations with bigger corporations is a strategic move to reach bigger audiences, which will eventually benefit us all. If this is what it will take to increase the size of WPB consumers then so be it! My hope is that this will increase demand and eventually organic vegetables will become cheaper for me! My local supermarkets (except whole foods) have a very limited selection of organic fruits and vegetables and they have told me it is because people do not buy them! I am certainly not paying 3 dollars for 4 leaves of lacinato kale from Wholefoods so I am forced to eat inorganic! I also face contempt from colleagues who think that being vegan is just absurd ! Anything to educate the masses is highly welcomed and appreciated !

Mark G, why are you worried? Dr. Greger is the real deal, Discovery channel affiliates aren’t going to change that. Just be glad the message is expanding. People need to learn about this, they don’t know. It’s Dr. Greger’s goal to reach as many people as he can because people just don’t know about this.

The first episode did not appeal to me – the use of oil is a turn off right there. Cooking/baking with salt, oil, sugar is easy. Creating delicious , nutritious dishes without the use of salt, oil, sugar can be challenging but so rewarding healthwise and worth the effort.

I’ve eaten at Vedge; we used Siri to find vegetarian restaurants close to our hotel while visiting Philadelphia (my husband’s hometown). It was a happy discovery.

That’s one reason we like our smartphones: we can find vegan restaurants nearby while traveling. And some are pretty darn good.

And I confess that I have been a vegetarian for nearly 50 years — for sustainability reasons. And I’ve always enjoyed my food, and never felt deprived at all. But I did worry about whether this diet was “healthy” when I first started, because I was always getting concerned questions (e.g.: “But where will you get your protein?” “How will you survive?”) if not outright derision (“You’re crazy!!!” etc). But the choices and options to eat whole foods plant based (to which we gradually moved a few years ago) seem to have exploded in the past few years.

Thank you for the beautiful visuals. I loved this video — and I was glad I’d eaten before I watched it. The food looked delicious!

-Nice introduction to the big picture of healthy eating for those without the hours or interest to piece it together from multiple studies, books, NF videos. Stepping outside my Nutrition Science Vegan Nerd circle, I find that most folks still have no clue what constitutes a healthy diet, how great “normal” could feel, or how delicious and craving free it can be. Even though the highly produced slick music video is a shock to the system first thing in the morning, when expecting my science fix…In its home context, this could be of help to a lot of people. Encouraging baby steps along the Healthier Eating Spectrum is a great invitation. Thanks Dr. G for getting the word out in every which way you can.

Yes thank you for appealing to a larger audience. I am always forwarding clips to my daughter to get her eating better (she is vegetarian but eats a lot of processed and dairy). When I see one of Dr G’s videos that I think will appeal to her she says (no offence Dr G), “uhgg that annoying voice again.” That is coming from her, not me! I love everything you have to say and how you say it <3. But having said that… I feel this "highly produced" version will attract a new set of folks to the message that needs to be rapidly spread before we are overwhelmed with poor health, a sickening environment and suffering animals in tourchured lives. I would love to see more celebrities get involved. We have to preach to the weak minded and what better way to do that than with a celebrity.

*Spoiler, lectins are not bad, they’re actually healthy!! The only time leftism are poisonous is in raw kidney beans, but even a small time of cooking to the point where they’re still too hard to eat, is enough to neutralize them – it’s all in his videos on the subject.

Great video. Dr Michael Greger is trying to convince people to try even little. Indian diet always includes lentil every day either in breakfast or lunch and dinner. However, it is never heard about black beans there. I am glad able to add it here.

They tend to eat more black gram, a completely different bean. This brings up a very good point though. The food culture of India is largely vegetarian by religion and they have used many different types of beans for generations. Centuries of recipe development too. I love my Indian cookbooks and the variety of legumes available from Indian food stores or online.

An excellent video Dr. Greger. Your approach toward those who are unfamiliar with a plant based diet is just right. You focus on benefits instead of picking apart the unhealthy diet-a great way to persuade the unfamiliar. Once they come on board their eyes will be opened. Good job.

So, beans are good and often tasty, but have you noticed that beans are often now coming from China . People in Costa Rica who fed themselves on locally grown beans now have beans from China. There is no reason their beans can’t continue to come from local grown beans, but now they are imported from China, not a place that is at the top of my healthy food list. Chinas history eliminates them as a source of any of my foods, so read those labels, and be aware of their label washing through others countries.

I’m dying to try the beans from Rancho Gordo which is an American company. Just because they are supposed to taste super fresh and amazing, but they are also grown in America. Palouse brand of lentils are also American grown and you can track them to the farm they came from.

But in the big picture, the benefits of eating vegetables outweighs any potential harm from pesticides used (Dr Greger has a video on this) and I would assume the same from beans and lentils.

To find out where things are grown, if it doesn’t say on the packaging or company’s website, you can contact the company. For bulk sections, you contact the store and they usually tell you when to call back or call you back when the supplier comes in because they’re the only person who knows and they sometimes get them from different sources shipment to shipment. But sometimes it says where it’s grown on the bulk container.
I avoid things from China as much as possible without going insane. If I avoided things from Mexico, I wouldn’t be doing myself any favors in missing out on watermelon, fresh berries, etc. etc… I only can find U.S grown watermelon during one very short time of the summer.

There are many companies I trust. I get all my beans and lentils from either Eden, Arrowhead Mills, or Cadia. Once you start reading the labels specifically for these things and start contacting companies, you start to get a growing list of trusted companies and a list of those you’d prefer to avoid, too, for that matter.

“Imports now account for about 17 percent of dry bean consumption. Aside from notable volumes for black beans, mung beans, and chickpeas, imports are largely spread out in smaller volumes over several classes. During the 2000s, imports have satisfied 20 percent of domestic black bean consumption.

About half of U.S. dry bean import volume originates in cross-border trade with Canada and Mexico. However, China has become the second leading supplier of dry beans to the United States, accounting for 23 percent of volume in 2007/08, up from 10 percent a decade earlier. Black beans (40 percent of volume) and mung beans (26 percent) accounted for the majority of imports from China in 2007/08. Imports of garbanzo beans, which come from Mexico (37 percent of volume in 2007/08), Canada (30 percent), and Turkey (12 percent), account for about a fourth of the domestic use of garbanzo beans and about 11 percent of all dry bean imports.”

Another awesome video! I consider Dr Gregor my savior and the savior of my 3 teenage children. Thank you sooo much for the information you give us, and one day hopefully the entire world will feel the way all of us whole food plant based eaters do. Let all do our part and save this planet one mouth at a time. Spread the knowledge.

I don’t eat much meat. I also don’t cook and can’t afford to eat out regularly. So there isn’t much left, if I limit eggs, besides milk products. If someone can tell me about something that tastes as good as plain milk, with as much protein, I might consider it. So far, none of the substitutes I’ve tried come close.

Is there evidence that plain milk or yogurt are just as bad as meat and eggs?

Hi Cathleen, Yeah there’s plenty of evidence and lots of it can be found right here on this site. Just put milk or eggs into the search bar and watch a few of the videos, or read a few of the blogs. Regarding milk. The best tasting milk I have EVER tasted was almond milk I made myself. It’s takes just a little bit of effort:
Take 1 cup of raw unpasteurized almonds and soak them for 24-48 hours or so. Then rinse them in a colander and put them in a blender with about 4 cups of water – preferably a high speed blender like a vitamix but I’ve made it in a Nutribullet (make smaller batches if you do that). Blend for 1 minute (in the Vitamix) or 2 to 3 minutes in a regular blender, then put in a nut bag or another tightly woven filter and squeeze all the milk out, leaving the fiber from the almonds behind to use some other way. This milk tastes SO good you will not believe it. It is thick and creamy and dreamy. It’s not great in coffee, because it tends to separate. For that I prefer some of the other milks such as cashew (even easier because you don’t have to strain it).

‘ When dairy fat was replaced with the same number of calories from vegetable fat or polyunsaturated fat, the risk of cardiovascular disease dropped by 10% and 24%, respectively. Furthermore, replacing the same number of calories from dairy fat with healthful carbohydrates from whole grains was associated with a 28% lower risk of cardiovascular disease.

Cathleen, dairy is one of the most detrimental things to our health! There are a plethora of reasons we should be avoiding it, and I’m not talking about human health, not even going to address the cruelty or environmental devastation.

Here’s the thing, I personally think dairy milk tastes horrible… when I used to drink it, I was USED to the taste and was so accustomed to it that I actually learned to like it with desserts, etc. When I first went vegan, I disliked plant milk simply because it was slightly different in taste and consistency than the skimmed dairy milk I was so used to. I used to think that I was never going to get that good “cookies and milk” experience again, but since I was doing it for the animals and that was FAR more important, I just “settled.” But after a short while, I started loving the taste of the plant milk and preferred it. It was at worst, just as good, but I really started to enjoy it more than I had ever enjoyed dairy and I can look back and remember that really gross aftertaste dairy left in the back of my throat that I used to have to try to ignore… *cringes…

Yogurt is basically milk with added probiotics… at its very best, it is pointless.

You really don’t need to worry about getting protein from milk, it was never meant to be a source of protein for anyone except infants. But soy milk is rich in protein. Most plant milks have some amount of protein. Silk actually makes a protein enriched cashew milk using pea protein.

This was one of the best videos I’ve ever seen. I am totally inspired to explore the world of beans and nuts even beyond what I’ve done so far. Dr. Greger and everyone else involved, THANK YOU for this great video! :)

Hi Brian – I’m Janelle, a Registered Dietitian as well as a Health Support Volunteer for NutritionFacts.org. Thanks for your comment and we really appreciate your feedback! Enjoy exploring the delicious world of beans, nuts, and beyond!

But, Dr. Greger, I still prefer you with facial hair for projects like this.

That is a little nit-picky, because you have such a gracious, positive personality, but when you have facial hair, it draws my eyes straight to the windows of your sweet soul and when you shave, I pause at your 5 O’clock shadow. I get to your eyes, but it takes a step to get there.

Nothing personal.

It is the science of visuals.

In each scene of this, someone was very aware of which things draw the eyes. Motion, colors, things like the tiles drawing the eyes from the foreground to the back, but you having dark hair, just makes your facial hair shadow a part of the visual process.

And, yes, now that I have said it, I will enjoy it even that you probably won’t listen to me.

It will make me laugh, and you might laugh or get annoyed that I am just someone who says everything out.

I look at the twinkle in your eyes and think that you and I will both laugh.

I honestly don’t see how Dr. Greger keeps up his work, free of charge to us and anyone else who wants to receive his daily videos and blogs, with all these bullshit comments. What is wrong with you, people? Get a life. Go somewhere else if you don’t like it. How much money have you lost supporting Dr. Greger’s work? Nothing, right! Sad, sad, sad, sad. If there’s a heaven, I hope I can get a section where no one is allowed to complain about the accommodations.

I agree and was only critical of the new style here in that I feel newcomers might be put off due to the add like format and overpowering music. I am English so might have a different reaction to this presentation style. I like 100 percent Dr Greger videos because they are full of scientificly proven facts not just opinion or lifestyle choices. I’m a hundred percent plant based and so are all my family. I often refer people to his site hence my concern if it were to became like other wish washy YouTube films. I hadn’t read the reason why the style was different but whatever the reason I dearly hope the high quality of his information films never changes. Thank you Dr Greger for all your hard work.

Dr. Greger will never stop showing us the detailed scientific evidence. He’s simply a doctor who actually wants to help people and is trying to reach as many people as he can. Offering as many different outlets as possible is the best way of doing that. This is a great addition to all the work he’s done and keeps doing and will only help get the information and his name out there.

Brian, I say let’s allow people to express themselves without putting them down. Open discussion breeds learning if we don’t descend into name calling. Those folks really value Dr. G and this site or they wouldn’t have expressed their concern.

This was a great video that was very informative as well as enjoyable! What a good way to get the word out there to more people, and encourage them to eat legumes and other healthy plant foods. Thank you Dr. Greger for all your effort in helping the world to regain their health!

Hi Valorie – I’m Janelle, a Registered Dietitian as well as a Health Support Volunteer for NutritionFacts.org. Thanks for your comment and we appreciate hearing your feedback! I hope you enjoy your legumes!

Larry, I agree that the oil and salt are a problem at vegan restaurants. We ask for low oil, low salt — and are told that we can be accommodated. I suppose I should clarify: low purified oil. Oil from ingredients (e.g., nuts) are fine.

Well, I guess I’ll talk too. I think the reason people of the blue zones are healthy is that they are not in the same culture (psychological reason). For example, they don’t have constant food entertainment with exotic dishes or products. They don’t think about food all they long. Part of their trick is that they are distracted, free from exposure to competing advertisements. The way of living is the difference. It is like trying to teach people how to diet in a cake shop while the people going to the cake shop are only shopping for cakes. They would rate a cake by its flavor but an observer would see that to make them healthy, they need to stop the cake game.

Maybe the better thing to do would be to advertise the video with a link to it on the site without actually posting it as one of the videos OF the site. I enjoyed it and didn’t object to its content, but I also recognize and appreciate the concern that some people have shown about it, especially because they used a lot of oil. It was very well done and slick and it would be great to post it on youtube or something and put a link here and on FB. My 2 cents!

I have a copy of Vedge that I won’t ever use. I skimmed it and found that most every recipe calls for ingredients that simply are not available in SmallTown, non-coastal USA, unless you mail-order them. Too much hassle for me. I do love how he does carrots, and grilled potatoes similarly just the other day. I’ll sell that book on eBay I reckon.

Love the break from “super shorts” and DO feel this is the sort of information package might reach more of the “pre-conversion” folks. I shared it on FB (where they hate me for eating well and talking about it, but I can’t stop).

Bravo, bravo, bravo, Dr!!!!! God bless you and your team. What a GREAT video. I am overwhelmed with your dedication to our health. I was literally moved. So beautifully produced and inspiring. Wow. Just wow. Thank you.

Do seeds off the same benefit as nuts when it comes to healthy fats and helping to absorb other nutrients in the body? If you can’t eat nuts, will you be missing out on vital nutrients on a WFPB lifestyle?

It’s the fat that helps absorb nutrients, so yes seeds will work the same way. If you’re unable to eat nuts, there’s no reason you would be missing out on vital nutrients, you can get them from other plant sources easily.

Investing in a decent pressure cooker will open up the possibilities a thousand fold! I promise. Just rinse the beans or legumes, add puréed garlic, onion and white pepper, and some fresh herbs, and you have a great start to a fantastic meal. The pressure cooker infuses everything you add as a homogeneous flavor enhancer and should take less than an hour from the ten minutes prep to the 20-45 minutes in the pressure cooker until the final depressurization of the steam……. once you get the nutribullet and pressure cooker down to a science, you will add years to your life saved on prep and cleanup time. You’ll thank me down the line. From flax,chia and hemp seeds, almonds, walnuts and raw pumpkin seeds, you can ground anything into a powder that like pure cocoa and Maca powder can be easily added to each batch of quinoa, sorghum, black beans, lentils or whatever grain source you find palatable…… good luck

i think natural meats are essential to an a maximally beneficial diet. i also think different races have different maximally beneficial diets. The Mediterranean diet is probably the best diet i know of, with generous amounts of olive oil (the real stuff 100% EVOO, not the 10% EVOO that the FDA has defined in their regulations governing olive oil, and this is documented in the book “Extra Virgin”, the balance being soybean or canola oil), and with generous servings of fish. Plato, who worked for the ruling class back in the day, advocated vegan diets for the masses, because it leads to less cognitive development, less agressive men, lower fertility rates and problems conceiving, and a more easily controlled population. Don’t believe me, go do your own research. Gregor may be deceived or he may be working for the progeny of the people Plato worked for. Conspiracy you say… nahhh those never happen, right?! That being said, i think beans are a fabulous part of a diet and just a part, but meat and animal products are also essential, especially for European people, in my opinion, from my own research.

“Roman gladiators, also known as hordearii, (which translates directly as “The Barley Men”) owed their peak physical condition to a predominately vegan diet of beans and barley. Their low fat high carb diet provided them improved blood flow and cardiovascular health, while also providing more than enough protein to build enormously powerful physiques.”https://www.libertariannews.org/2016/08/15/vegan-gladiators-the-barley-men-of-rome/

I am laughing, because I got banned off of John McDougall’s Boards in 5 seconds, for putting a link to Dr. Greger’s Cancer videos. Five seconds flat and I am already banned until after the 25th. Dr. Greger has been so nice to people no matter which conspiracy theory they have that I didn’t know how to interact in another community.

I am going to be drinking my Fiji Water and see if getting the aluminum and copper and cadmium and whatever else might have gotten to my brain helps me to be a better citizen of the universe. I sure hope so.

interesting, i did not know that, but is it possible they could have been even more powerful and aggressive eating some natural meats and animal products? also, did you verify the fact about Plato encouraging the masses to eat a vegan diet, to make them less intelligent, less aggressive, lower fertility rates, and make the population more easily controlled, kind of like India, where the class structure is horrific– either subsistent working poor, or a tiny elite ultra-rich controlling class. what do you think of Plato doing this? was Jesus a vegan, or any of the disciples? my ultimate guide for everything is God’s Word in the Bible, rather than anything from man, because so much of what we’ve been taught are known lies, like the food pyramid we grew up with, like margarine is better than butter, that salt is dangerous (full spectrum salt like sea salt or himalayan salt is critically important to health), a total cholesterol of 200 is dangerous (that is about ideal as cholesterol is needed for production of hormones like testosterone), and so much more!

and they fed the gladiators beans and lentils because, just like today, they are cheaper than meats. we all use the knowledge of the day to try and figure some of these things out based on “science”, but science is what was used back in the days of blood-letting, and even today with electroshock therapy, and using poisons like chemotherapy and other poisons (drugs) that are prescribed routinely. the Bible has a scripture that says something to the effect of “God’s knowledge make man’s knowledge trivial”. plus, the legumes, produce and everything from the earth has generally a fraction of the minerals and nutrients they should, because the soils have been purposefully stripped of the minerals by big agribusiness, another player in the conspiracy against God’s creation, man. this is why it is so good to grow your own food, and buy from local small farmers, who hopefully use good soil management practices to keep their soil in good shape.

This is an evidenced based website. Evidence is objective, unbiased, peer-reviewed research based an experiments. Everything Dr. Greger presents here is “evidenced based” If you have any evidence that meat and added fat is healthy, we’d love to see it. Feel free to post the links to journal articles here. All the evidence we’ve seen shows that groups of people that eat meat and added fat get sick and die younger than the ones that don’t eat these things. Again, show us the evidence and we’ll believe. Just keep in mind that opinion papers, government publications , newspaper articles and advertising are not evidence.

And stay away from Mexican beer, buying produce from the 99 cent store, using aluminum foil for cooking your vegetables in, buying fruit from street vendors or off the freeways, jeez, the list goes on and on…….

Well your thoughts on meat being essential to the human diet are completely opposed by the collective evidence. Nothing against Plato, but the guy has been proven wrong if those were his claims. Once again, the science literally says the opposite. In fact it’s the consumption of animals that leads to cognitive decline, sexual dysfunction, etc. I’ll take your word for it (I guess), that Plato suggested as much, but it’s you who has the research to do in regards to what the actual science has to say.
James, it’s easy to spot someone going to great lengths to defend what they’d prefer to be true so I would keep that in mind and tone your approach down next time.
The thing is, most people here HAVE done their research and if you had done yours simply on Dr. Greger alone, you’d realize he’s one of the most well researched M.D’s out there and I consider that an understatement. You’re right about conspiracy theories, but a little backwards… those too are pretty easy to spot, you follow the money. Not exactly big money in the leafy greens industry but plenty of money and political influence in the animal agriculture industries. And now I must laugh because it’s all I have left to do.

This was a great video. I happen to be a vegan already and really struggle to convince my traditional meat and two veg-eating family of the benefits of a plant-based diet. However, this is just the sort of video I could share with them without fear of their usual ‘you’re on your soapbox again’ reaction. Of course we all have to make our own decisions regarding processed fat intake etc, but the first step has to be changing to a plant-based diet and this little film can really help. Thank you.

It is Sad the way all these folks (us) _HAVE_ to pick apart the video and every tiny inconsistency with their notions of ultimate healthy eating.

It is GREAT that each of you have such wonderfully precise and brutally strict notions and practices of achieving your version of the healthiest health. I do applaud YOU for that, and wish you the best in such pursuit for yourselves and your families.

This flick is obviously not designed for such narrowly focused viewpoints. This flick is obviously designed to get SOME OF THE MEAT+3 eaters to consider the notion of alternative sources of protein. It is for themto be introduced to some of the Concepts of the issues involved with Industrial Meat Consumption in our society. It’s not really for “us”.

I still think it’s a wonderful example of that and that maybe possibly some of my friends and family would not be so off-put by watching it. The endless needling over exceptions and deviations from our “perfect notions” simply is not conducive to the conversion of the masses of MEATHEADS to folks who strive to be Healthy by eating mostly PLANTS most of the time.

Please do no go forth and beat up the Meatheads who are giving “alternatives” a try (because they’re doing it “wrong”), this is not how we convert the world.

It would be better to acknowledge their attempts and to show some support. You might get to leading them further if you can find some common ground and trust. Not all humans are scientist.

There’s a HUGE corporate and cultural bias against us. Being a bunch of nit-pickers does not help us convert others to Better Health. It makes us look like a sack full of ninnies that no one wants around.

Is not better health (for all) via Nutrition the real point of Nutrition Facts?

It isn’t just those who’ve yet to be converted into “perfect eating” who aren’t 100% whole foods 100% of the time. I for one consider myself whole foods plant based, but I’m not opposed to using small amounts of oil, I just minimize it and omit it most of the time and choose which I use. I’m not opposed to adding salt, I just use it very sparingly. And so on…
I am in incredible health and feel that I have an optimal diet for myself. I appreciate all the benefits I get form everything I eat. My vitals are outstanding. I have seen such a dramatic improvement in eating this way. So for this reason among many, it’s incredibly irritating when those who do omit oil, salt, any added sugars, etc., present themselves as “holier than thou” and even become reprimanding or speak in blatant arrogance. And some of these people with this attitude eat things or take things that I never personally would, but I don’t judge them for it nor do I consider myself superior. Humans are so flawed, so often incapable of finding that middle place. Not everything has to be a war.

And to build off of my comment, when it comes to this kind of attitude, there is ALWAYS going to be someone who thinks their diet is superior and looks down on the next… some won’t eat any cooked foods, some won’t eat certain cooked foods, some will take drugs, some won’t, some are very low fat, some are almost no fat, some supplement, some don’t, etc… Who cares.

Naked Food Magazine uploaded a recipe on YouTube for 5-Minute Black Bean Brownies. If this doesn’t convince a meat-eater to give beans a try, nothing will. They are absolutely delicious. All you need is a cup of cooked black beans, dates, pumpkin seeds, cacao and a food processor.

Insurance won’t pay it, but you might see if you could get a fecal transplant from a healthy non-diabetic WFPB organic foods person. Don’t know that you get to choose your own donor, but I genuinely would be looking for those things.

One research concept talked about trying to increase C-peptide, a marker of insulin secretion.

So I looked to see if there was any way to affect C-Peptide naturally.

Here is one article talking about Vitamin D Supplementation to increase C-Peptide.

They looked at PUFA’s so you might look at your Vegan Omega 3’s and contemplate Flaxseed and Chia intake and make sure you aren’t getting too much Omega 6. Dr. Greger has a video on the Omega 3 to Omega 6 ratio.

“In a 24-week intervention trial, a complete fatty liver regression was observed after a 2 g/day of n-3 PUFA supplementation in the context of an American Heart Association (AHA) diet in 33.4% of the patients”

I am posting this, because I know that Type 1 Diabetes is a hard one to answer and nobody is answering, because the research isn’t finished on any topic yet.

Technology to help is already down the pike, which really will handle it, but it is frustratingly going to take a long time for things, which are working over in the research labs to make it to your doctors office. They are doing bionic pancreas and 3D laser printing of organs and they have already learned how to wash other peoples cells out of organs from organ donors and they are working with stem cells and I don’t know whether they have solved the Pancreas yet, but I watched a video before they solved kidney and now they have one printed in 7 hours out of people’s own cells and it fully functions. Those are on Ted Talks and are very cool to see. Wake Forest Institute is one of the places, but that list is growing. So be encouraged.

Okay, it is almost 7 in the morning and I haven’t slept a wink.

I don’t want you to listen to me. I want you to maybe to start with these concepts and see if they lead you somewhere,

These aren’t good answers, because it is totally intuitive, without scientific basis, but foods that help the liver and foods that decrease inflammation and foods that heal the gut microbiome

I really haven’t slept so I am not going to type out the spices I think might have been listed.

But with gut microbiome if you don’t want to do a decal transplant, make sure you eat organic, because Round Up is an antibiotic and the Food Revolution Sunmit talked about it wiping out whole strains of gut bacteria.

Probiotics is one of Dr Gregers topics, but ithat isn’t as effective as healthy donor fecal transplant, but you can try eating the widest possible variety of every organic produce from all different locations, because each food has its own bacteria, but plant sources and organic only.

Lord, I haven’t read it in a while so I don’t remember everything the chapter has to say, but in Dr. Greger’s book “How Not To Die” there is a chapter on diabetes that you may find helpful. I would also search this site for videos pertaining to diabetes. Here are all the videos that came up when I typed it “type 1 diabetes”…

As you probably are aware Type 1 diabetes is Type 1 diabetes is a chronic condition in which the pancreas produces little or no insulin. Insulin is a hormone needed to allow sugar (glucose) to enter cells to produce energy.Looking for one particular fruit or vegetable to “fight” it is not an approach that makes sense. Certainly a WFPB diet makes sense in general to maximize the body’s ability to work effectively including metabolize insulin, but especially with Type 2 no one food will make the the pancreas produce insulin or make it more effective. A WFPB approach can however maximize your ability to metabolize sugars so I encourage you to check out other videos on this site explaining this process and eat accordingly, adopting a variety of healthy fruits and vegetables. .

One of the vegan doctors did reverse a few people with Type 1 Diabetes.

I saw it I a documentary.

Pritikin was already using food to decrease the amount of medicines that Type 1 Diabetics needed by 40% in his day and he didn’t even try to get people all the way off animal products and he wasn’t having them go organic and wasn’t aware of gut microbiome and other things.

Seems like if he could do that eating WFPB might bring them down even further.

I am blank on the doctors name who only had a few Type 1 Diabetics and got two of them off insulin.

I think he was a raw vegan diet.

Not saying that is necessary, but he was low salt, low sugar, organic, Whole Food, no processed food, no oil.

They know that other organs can produce insulin and that you have to get the fat out of the organs.

They know inflammation is linked to it.

They know they are missing gut bacteria which performs certain functions.

They suspect Round Up with it.

The real superfoods haven’t bern put to the test yet.

Neither has things like fecal transplants.

If I had it, I would be putting the superfoods to the test and I would be getting off sugar, Round Up, salt, oils and animal fats and I would be eating Exekiel Bread and testing every super food possible and I would be coming back here and giving people the answers.

Dear Mr. Greger,
I do not know how else to contact you, so I am really hoping that you see this message as soon as possible.
I am asking you to kindly research and give us any at all information on Pulmonary Hypertension. We would appreciate any information, Lifestyle, Food, Sleep, Sport activities, Medicine… Especially for children/teens with such condition. We desperately need your knowledge at this hard time in our life.
I hope this message finds you somehow soon
Thank you so much in advance!!!
Elena

All legumes are good for you. The amount of nutrients is slightly different depending on which type you are eating. For example black beans have more iron than the others legumes. Anyway, all are good for your health

I apologize for this off-topic post, not on beans.
However, I was wondering if Dr. Greger plans to address statistical methods in journal articles .Especially the current argument over moving from p-values of <0.05 being labelled as "significant" to "suggestive" and raising the significance bar to a <0.005. If he could touch on the benefits of also using the effect size as well as the p-value I'd be so interested to hear his take.

I ended up watching it again, because of the comments and, Dr. Greger, you nailed this performance. You look so natural and so comfortable. This was my favorite of all of these types of projects, which you did. Whoever directed you made you comfortable. You were just your warm self. Excellent.

Watching it again, this has a simplified version of the right information, too. Audience appropriate.

If we hadn’t learned all of this week by week, I think the content would have been more the focus.

When I lived in California, I lived with film students and when they story boarded their films, they would take their favorite movies or comic books to help plan out the visuals.

This feels like someone took commercial after commercial and did that same process and the thing is commercials psychologically cause people to prepare for a sales pitch. Using a PBS show might have been better.

I think the very first note was probably too artsy and the topic could have been organized a little better, because midway through it switches from beans to proteins. Editing decisions maybe.

Because of that, I can’t tell you what the over arching atopic was.

Proteins for vegans?

Or maybe just beans, since that was in the title.

That makes it harder work for an audience member. And having the motion of the visuals going by while I still hadn’t figured out the topic maybe is why I had to pause it midway through the first time, but got so much more of Dr Gregers part the second time and was slightly surprised at how much Dr Greger fit in.

Some of the effects reminded me of commercials and that is okay, but it is where it becomes slick. Impressive in the duper owl ad, but it needs to be visuals needed to be secondary to the topic.

The meat visualsworked so well. Perfect visuals to emphasize the sentences. Maybe a little obvious, but that is something you want to be obvious on.

I am going to say that the chef brought heart and that all of the people were pleasantly watchable with good faces and voices and good things to say, but it was not edited to bringing each of their messages together and by the end, I remember Dr Greger and the Chef, but I lose the woman and it is because there were times when things like nuts came on and I internally said, “I thought it was about beans” and proteins came up and I thought,”Is this whole thing about proteins?”

In the episode prescription nutrition spilling beans it is stated that there is a study where people added nuts to their regular diet but didnt gain any weight??? I thought weight gain is nothing more than calories in vs calories out so how is this possible, i really would like to see the paper that was used in the video that made that claim

Weight gain is so much more than calories in calories out. As one doctor put it (to ROUGHLY paraphrase), that concept would work if we were simple machines, but we’re not; 100 calories worth of broccoli will act entirely differently than 100 calories worth of oreos.
Food and our bodies are so much more complex than that. Different foods can take more energy to break down, different foods have an effect on blood sugar e.g. pairing meat with a high glycemic food like white rice or a white potato can actually increase your blood sugar spike while pairing some berries (due to their antioxidant content I believe) helps maintain it, the same with beans and legumes and I think maybe even nuts (it’s in one of Dr. Greger’s videos, I think it was this one: https://nutritionfacts.org/video/effects-of-avocados-and-red-wine-on-meal-induced-inflammation/ ). Then you have foods that have arganine like a lot of nuts do which promotes fat burning, spices such as cayenne which causes your body to go into thermogensis where you use more energy… there is just so much to it.

It’s my personal opinion that the calories in calories out approach is an archaic concept trying to simplify something extraordinarily complex. And while it may often serve as a good guideline to many, if that theory were actually true, people like Freely who eat like 3,000 calories a day or something like that, wouldn’t be so thin. If that theory were true I definitely shouldn’t be as thin as I am either.

It’s my personal thinking that when we give our bodies what they’re actually designed to use (plant foods) it knows what to do with them. I also find that I experience a better brain-body connection eating a WFPB diet, which is to say that I don’t have the desire to keep eating after I’m full and I only get cravings when I’m actually hungry.

“Clinical trials reveal little or no weight change with inclusion of various types of nuts in the diet over 1–6 mo. Mechanistic studies
indicate this is largely attributable to the high satiety property of nuts, leading to compensatory responses that account for
65–75% of the energy they provide. Limited data suggest chronic consumption is associated with elevated resting energy
expenditure resulting in dissipation of another portion of the energy they provide. Additionally, due to poor bioaccessibility,
there is limited efficiency of energy absorption from nuts. Collectively, these mechanisms offset much of the energy
provided by nuts. The few trials contrasting weight loss through regimens that include or exclude nuts indicate improved
compliance and greater weight loss when nuts are permitted”

In other words, you simply don’t absorb most of the fat in nuts, and nuts make you full so you eat less, and nuts make you burn more calories.

I’ve read *all* of the great content on this site regarding bone health, but I still have some questions since the recommendations here differ from those of providers, which may differ from osteo-health association recommendations, which may differ by country of origin, etc.

Details: 50 yo male, diagnosed osteopenia, family history of osteoporosis, low meat diet for many years, after diagnosis, initially relied on dairy for calcium, fully vegan for last 6 months, walk/run almost every day, lift weights 3x a week, 15 minutes of yoga a day, and over three years, improved density scores which I attribute to dedicated exercise and a focus on getting the right nutrition. So, acknowledging that the science is a moving target since the research is ongoing, here are some gaps in my knowledge that I am trying to fill:

1. Reduced salt is recommended for bone health– to zero? Does that mean don’t add salt to beans? Does it mean add modest amounts? Are their guidelines?

2. Reduced caffeine is also recommended– is it better to reduce to zero? Is a cup of coffee a day too much?

3. Agree or disagree: soaking beans doesn’t make much of a difference for cooking times or nutritional impact? In particular, soaking is reported to reduce phytates which are helpful to bone health, but is that reduction even meaningful in terms of the nutrition the body can make use of?

4. The recommended targets for calcium intake for osteoporosis and osteopenia vary by country, but here in the U.S., they are high (1000-1200 milligrams/day)… getting this level of calcium on a WFPB diet requires a lot of greens (collards) and beans (great northern) in addition to other plant-based sources of calcium and other minerals (fruits, almonds, etc). Given the amounts of greens and beans needed to hit the calcium targets, this is a big kitchen commitment to make every week. So I wonder if there is reliable guidance on lower calcium targets that might reduce the level of effort required.

5. Most studies on bone health reference women, though, of course, this is always the case. Still, are there any risks/efficacy considerations for men following the recommendations that surface from studies of women?

6. Calcium supplementation is a no-go, but is that also the case for fortified soy milk and other products? Dr. G makes a great case against pill-supplements but as far as I can tell is not explicit re: in-food added calcium as in soy milk. It seems to me he implies that it is OK, but I am not sure that he endorses it or if there is research on this so it feels uncertain or possibly contradictory. What am I missing? Is that to be avoided as well?

I’ve read *all* of the great content on this site regarding bone health, but I still have some questions since the recommendations here differ from those of providers, which may differ from osteo-health association recommendations, which may differ by country of origin, etc.

Details: 50 yo male, diagnosed osteopenia, family history of osteoporosis, low meat diet for many years. After diagnosis, initially relied on dairy for calcium, fully vegan for last 6 months, walk/run almost every day, lift weights 3x a week, 15 minutes of yoga a day.

Acknowledging that the science is a moving target since the research is ongoing, here are some gaps in my knowledge that I am trying to fill:

1. Reduced salt is recommended for bone health– to zero? Does that mean don’t add salt to beans? Does it mean add modest amounts? Are their guidelines?

2. Reduced caffeine is also recommended– is it better to reduce to zero? Is a cup of coffee a day too much?

3. Agree or disagree: soaking beans doesn’t make much of a difference for cooking times or nutritional impact? In particular, soaking is reported to reduce phytates which are helpful to bone health, but is that reduction even meaningful in terms of the nutrition the body can make use of? Should we care?

4. The recommended targets for calcium intake for osteoporosis and osteopenia vary by country, but here in the U.S., they are high (1000-1200 milligrams/day)… getting this level of calcium on a WFPB diet requires a lot of greens (collards) and beans (great northern) in addition to other plant-based sources of calcium and other minerals (fruits, almonds, etc). Given the amounts of greens and beans needed to hit the calcium targets, this is a big kitchen commitment to make every week. Is there reliable guidance on lower calcium targets that might reduce the level of effort required without sacrificing the good bone-health benefits?

5. Most studies on bone health reference women, though, of course, this isn’t always the case. Still, are there any risks/efficacy considerations for men following the recommendations that surface from studies of women?

6. Calcium supplementation is a no-go, but is that also the case for fortified soy milk and other products? Dr. G makes a great case against pill-supplements but as far as I can tell is not explicit re: in-food added calcium as in soy milk. It seems to me he implies that it is OK, but I am not sure that he endorses it or if there is research on in-food supplementation. So it feels uncertain or possibly contradictory to the no-supplemental calcium guidance. What am I missing?

Hi, JP. Congratulations on educating yourself about nutrition and health, and switching to a plant-based, active lifestyle! I will try to answer your questions one at at time.
1. Reduced salt is recommended for bone health– to zero? Does that mean don’t add salt to beans? Does it mean add modest amounts? Are their guidelines?
This study:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26967579
found an association between sodium intake and bone loss in Korean women, but not in men. Their definition of low-sodium was less than 2g/d. That said the American Heart Association recommends less than 1500mg/d of sodium for heart health.

2. Reduced caffeine is also recommended– is it better to reduce to zero? Is a cup of coffee a day too much?
This study:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24576685
found an increased risk of bone fracture in women with daily coffee consumption, but an apparent protective effect in men. It appear that a daily cup of coffee might not be to much, at least for you.

3. Agree or disagree: soaking beans doesn’t make much of a difference for cooking times or nutritional impact? In particular, soaking is reported to reduce phytates which are helpful to bone health, but is that reduction even meaningful in terms of the nutrition the body can make use of? Should we care?
This study:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19053869
suggests that reduction of phytate by soaking may not be meaningful. I do not soak my beans, but I do use a pressure cooker for convenience.

4. The recommended targets for calcium intake for osteoporosis and osteopenia vary by country, but here in the U.S., they are high (1000-1200 milligrams/day)… getting this level of calcium on a WFPB diet requires a lot of greens (collards) and beans (great northern) in addition to other plant-based sources of calcium and other minerals (fruits, almonds, etc). Given the amounts of greens and beans needed to hit the calcium targets, this is a big kitchen commitment to make every week. Is there reliable guidance on lower calcium targets that might reduce the level of effort required without sacrificing the good bone-health benefits?
I think the key is to minimize the amount of calcium that is leaving the bones and the body, which will reduce the need for dietary intake. Your activity and low-sodium, plant-based diet should help with that. Certainly, you want to maximize your intake of the foods you mention. I do not know that specific recommendations have been established for people following plant-based diets, but I do not think that supplements are necessary or recommended. I wish I had a better answer for you, but that is the best I have at the moment.

5. Most studies on bone health reference women, though, of course, this isn’t always the case. Still, are there any risks/efficacy considerations for men following the recommendations that surface from studies of women?
The studies I referenced above are on both men and women, and it does appear that some risk factors for women do not apply equally to men. I suggest searching PubMed regularly for new research that is applicable to you.

6. Calcium supplementation is a no-go, but is that also the case for fortified soy milk and other products? Dr. G makes a great case against pill-supplements but as far as I can tell is not explicit re: in-food added calcium as in soy milk. It seems to me he implies that it is OK, but I am not sure that he endorses it or if there is research on in-food supplementation. So it feels uncertain or possibly contradictory to the no-supplemental calcium guidance. What am I missing?
The only recommendation I have seen from Dr. G. about fortified soy milk is to shake it before drinking it, as the calcium may settle to the bottom. I have not seen either a direct endorsement nor a warning against it. If he felt it was harmful, he would say so.

I found this video under the “longevity” section, so I’m posting here in the hope that my question will at least be somewhat on topic.

I know that Dr. Greger’s general recommendation is to eat whole (raw or lightly and correctly processed) plant foods and to steer clear of pills and supplements (with the three notable exceptions of B12, Vitamin D, and vegan omega 3 pills). A few years ago, however, some scientists “discovered/developed” a form of Vitamin B called nicotinamide riboside (NR). Apparently, NR is a precursor to something called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), and NAD+ is in turn apparently critical to mitochondrial function, which is an important factor in longevity.

A quick Google search will yield what seems to me to be a fairly extensive body of scholarly research on NR/NAD+, and it seems that a lot of this research is positive. Not surprisingly, the scientists who “discovered/developed” NR have a patent on it (not sure how you patent a vitamin) and are selling it in pill form for a not-so-cheap price (no surprise).

I was wondering whether Dr. Greger has any opinion of this stuff. Thanks.

Hi, paul. I will offer my take on this. NAD+ is the oxidized form of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, a coenzyme found in all living cells. It is used in the citric acid cycle, also known as the Krebs cycle or the tricarboxylic acid cycle, to carry electrons from one reaction to another. The citric acid cycle produces energy in the form of ATP. Our bodies make NAD+ from the amino acid tryptophan or aspartic acid, or it may be obtained from niacin in food. I do not know that there is any advantage to ingesting it preformed, especially if it is very expensive. I hope that helps!

I spent the whole day on omega 3 and still have no answer , the nordicbrand suggested HAS 715 mg WRITTEN on the bottle and dr Gregor suggests 250 mcg once daily. I don’t get it . As u can see I am going brain dead or am too dumb to figure this complicated stuff out . BUT BY THE COMMENTS I THINK OTHERS ARE HAVING TROUBLE UNDERSTANDING it appreciate clarification . , that’s if I am able to find where to look for any response to my comments , As I e commented on many videos then I forget which one I commented on .cant go thru a 1000 or more
I am frustrated for sure. Diana

Dianalascano,
I am not sure what the problem is or who recommended Nordic brand, but there are several vegan brands with lower doses, either in liquid or vegan capsules:
– Dr. Fuhrman’s vegan liquid w/ DHA 175mg / EPA 88mg (one feature is that he keeps the product refrigerated until it is shipped);

– Nature’s Way NutraVege Omega-3 Plant Based Liquid (Canadian; hexane free) w/ 500 mg per teaspoon, so 1/2 tsp per day would do it
(very economical);

– Swanson vegan capsules 150 mg DHA/ 90 mg EPA (263 mg total) per capsule, so equivalent to the 254 mg used in the study cited to support the 250 mg recommendation. One issue that bothers some is that capsules, no matter the brand, seem to have carageenan and some artifical sweetener.

Just discovered another one:
– Nested Vegan (Canadian), which uses Life’s Omega which is a common source of algal DHA/EPA for manufacturers. Amount: 200 mg DHA / 100 mg EPA per capsule, a little more than 250 mg but not enough to be concerned about, it seems to me (actually I take from 500 mg – 1000 mg per day). No hexane used. The remarkable thing is the capsules do not contain carageenan or artificial sweetener. Not a brand I am familiar with.

The 4th part is available at CuriosityStream.com but, only if you sign up and agree to their terms of privacy. Seems that they will share everything about users to about everyone they want to. So, free comes with a hefty price!

In his Daily Dozen, Dr. Greger does not count soymilk as a serving of legumes at all, since it is a processed plant-food. However, you will obviously still obtain the beneficial nutrients found in soy milk (i.e., plant protein, vitamin B-12, etc.). Many of the phytochemicals, though, are lost in the processing of soybeans into soymilk.